


The Road to Awe

by sinuous_curve



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Community: help_pakistan, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-13
Updated: 2010-10-13
Packaged: 2017-10-12 15:52:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/126557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinuous_curve/pseuds/sinuous_curve
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>The night they somehow manage to survive Moriarty, a battalion of snipers, and an explosion that leaves the swimming pool a damp crater smelling thickly of chlorine, Sherlock predictably refuses to go to the hospital.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	The Road to Awe

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the wonderful innie_darling for help_pakistan. Betaed by okubyo_kitsune.

The night they somehow manage to survive Moriarty, a battalion of snipers, and an explosion that leaves the swimming pool a damp crater smelling thickly of chlorine, Sherlock predictably refuses to go to the hospital.

John watches him pace from the back of an ambulance, orange blanket wrapped tightly around his shoulders by firm EMT with streaks of gray shot through her blond hair. John isn't in shock, but it seems like a professional courtesy to at least let her go through the routine.

Honestly, of more pressing concern in the water soaked through his clothes and shoes and the fact that Moriarty is nowhere to be found. He doesn't share the police's confidence that they'll find his body in the wreckage.

The sense memory of having pulled the trigger on the gun and the roaring explosion that followed is curiously strong. As is the knowledge that, once again, he is alive because Sherlock had the presence of mind to throw them both into the pool.

"If you're not going to the hospital, then go home," Lestrade says reasonably, one discreet hand pressing against Donovan's wrist. Probably it's to keep her from justifiably throttling Sherlock while half the police force and technicians cheer.

Sherlock narrows his eyes and thins his mouth into a perfect caricature of sheer, bloody obstinacy. John has a hell of a headache thumping away between his temples and he has seen this scene played out too many times. "Sherlock," he says quietly.

And God, it should not work. But Sherlock stiffly straightens his shoulders and pulls his mouth into a clearly displeased scowl; he doesn't say anything and the argument falls aborted to the floor. Lestrade blinks, like a man who has just seen a pretty girl in sequins vanish before his eyes and can't work out how it's been done.

Sherlock's face is stony but John is too goddamn tired to wonder at the small miracle of his acquiescence. He meets Lestrade's eyes and shrugs, earning a small, resigned sigh. "What about you?"

John's skeleton feels properly jarred and all the old wounds have begun to groan and grumble. The doctor in him says only an idiot survives an explosion and then skips merrily back to their flat to die of internal bleeding.

"I'm all right." John forces himself to his feet and shrugs off the orange blanket. "I just need a bit of sleep."

There's a profound sense of Not Being Believed that comes with them setting off down the street in search of a cab. Lestrade calls out a reminder that they need to come and make official statements as soon as possible, along with a promise that he'll keep them apprised of any further developments. John wonders what they'll do when they don't find Moriarty's body and he wonders if the shop next to their flat is open and he wonders what Sherlock is thinking all in equal measure.

Sherlock is utterly silent while John hails a cab and gives their address.

It's become nearly impossible for John to get into a cab and not think about the little brown and white pill Sherlock nearly popped into his mouth like an idiot. It brings up a tired, repressed surge of annoyance as he settles into the seat, listening to the low murmured growl of the engine.

Halfway to Baker Street, in a perfectly clear and reasonable voice, Sherlock says, "You do realize that Moriarty is much too clever to have not predicted this as a possible outcome."

John's looking out the window at the lights streaking past. Most of the shops are closing down, but some have kept their windows glowing, casting the names written on the glass in elongated shadows. He barely registers Sherlock, but he's very conscious of the missing weight of his gun.

It's become evidence.

"He's much too fond of the game to let this be the end," Sherlock says contemplatively. In the reflection of the car's glass window, John can see his fingers touched to his lips. "No, I think this is just a beginning."

Real people don't have archenemies who seem strangely immune from death, and they don't risk their lives for the satisfaction of knowing they were right, and they don't have obscenely, obscurely powerful elder brothers; it doesn't happen.

But of course, real people likely don't shoot serial killers and go for Thai afterward and they don't nearly die and walk away with steady hands, either. John presses the heel of his hand to his temple. He wasn't looking for this. He just wanted to stay in London and not go broke in the process.

As it turns out, the shop next door is closed and locked down tight. Which, after a moment of frustration, John realizes he doesn't mind. He feels like all he has inside himself is an ache radiating out from his bones, pushing against his skin.

He's a doctor, he knows what shock looks and feels like and he knows this isn't it. Men in shock don't have a sense of resentment curling around the base of their brains that maybe their flatmates have a point about the business of being normal.

Or, rather failing at it.

John pays the cabbie and Sherlock unlocks the front door. The 221 gleams dark in the dim light from the street lamps. It's gloomy inside, too, and quiet. Mrs. Hudson must have gone to bed, because John can't hear the telly or her shuffling around the kitchen.

"I'm for bed," John says.

Sherlock doesn't signal any acknowledgement. He sheds his coat and throws it over the back of the chair.

With the lights off, he looks even stranger than he usually does. Which is a feat, John thinks, because Sherlock Holmes has never had a moment in his life where he wasn't strange. He's like a character excised from a poem by Poe and dropped incongruously into present day London. He swoops to his usual pacing path in front of the two windows that face the street.

"Good night, then," John says and feels absurd.

They nearly _died_ , which ought to mean something. Were they not the kind of men who fairly regularly nearly die, perhaps it would. John's not even sure whether it's the shock of violence that's tugging insistently at the back of his mind, or whether it's having been kidnapped, which is actually a first.

He's self-aware enough to note that he's spent more time picking apart his lack of tangible, normal, _human_ reaction than reacting. John shakes his head as he climbs the stairs to his top floor room. They creak comfortingly beneath his feet, steps done in time with Sherlock in his restless motion across the living room.

In his room, which has only just begun to lose the empty, sterile quality his last room had, John strips down to his boxers. His clothes are damp, smelling thickly of chemicals and smoke. He chucks them in the laundry bin, even though he knows they're likely unsalvageable. His skin has the same scent and he feels grimy, but the shower seems terribly far away and he has no particular desire to leave the close darkness of his room.

There's a restlessness wraped around his limbs, murmuring a faint need to move. John shakes his head. He can hear the shuffle and thumps of Sherlock downstairs. No.

His bed is neatly made. Certain habits are difficult to break and this one ranks so very low down on the list of things than John does as to be inconsequential, no matter how much he pictures his eighteen year old self recoiling in horror from such a fussy habit. John turns back the blanket and the sheet and lies down on his back, hands folded over his chest, staring at the ceiling.

He isn't tired.

Everything is too quietly and insistently alive around him. The pipes in the wall groan softly and clank their aging parts together. The wind rattles the window just a touch where it doesn't sit entirely right in the frame. And Sherlock, of course, his footsteps floating up the stairs and into John's room.

It's like the force of Sherlock's thoughts have taken on a tangible weight and are pushing themselves into the one little place in all the world John has tried to claim as his.

John clenches his jaw, because he knows very well that despite his indignant sense that Moriarty has nothing to do with him, he also knows that he very consciously chose to throw himself in with a genius and a madman. And he didn't have to do that. What springs irrationally to mind are marriage vows: _in sickness and in health, through serial killing cabbies and exploding swimming pools, as long as you both shall live_.

"Maybe not be that bloody long," John murmurs to the blank ceiling overhead.

It's too much for him to think about, even though the sense of it all won't go away. Explosives, he now knows, are heavier than they look. And the steady tick of a clock has become the single most awful sound he has ever heard, even over the screams of dying men and the rattatat of bullets.

John very firmly closes his eyes and takes a few deep, steadying breaths. It all feels a bit futile, but sleep has never been something he's had success at forcing. He counts in a breath of five through his nose and out for another five through his mouth. What he sees behind his eyelids is not comforting darkness of promised oblivious, but rather a mocking replay on his first afternoon in Baker Street.

If he could replay the whole thing over again, would he go with Sherlock to the murder scene of the lady in pink? Or would he settle back down in the chair to Mrs. Hudson's tea and biscuits. No, John knows he wouldn't, just as he knows that Sherlock wouldn't have bothered keeping him as a flatmate if he'd said no.

"Bloody hell," John sighs, opening his eyes to the distorted shadows of his room at night.

On the street below, a car drives past and the headlight track a path across the walls. John follows it with his eyes, lying still on the creaking, aged mattress that Mrs. Hudson graciously provided with the room.

It's then that the first faint strains of violin come up the stairs.

John inhales a long, slow breath as the notes coalesce together into music distinguishable from the usual low murmur of 221 Baker Street at night. Sherlock is so very many things, but John often forgets that musician ranks rather high among them. He always has his damned violin at hand.

It's more that Sherlock is apt to use his violin as an extension of himself, or a weapon. He scratches out atonal noise whenever Mycroft comes over, as an expression of his impatience and a way to underscore just how deeply uninterested Sherlock is in what his brother has to say. He uses it for emphasis when he's tumbling out the solution to a case while John listens and nods and pretends he's following the half-explained lines of logic.

Sherlock, honestly, only _plays_ when he doesn't think anyone is listening. Or when it's enough like no one is listening that he can pretend as much.

The notes are quiet through John's closed door and he has to strain to pick out the thread of melody. Usually, he would let the song be a lullaby and lull himself to sleep on the back of it, but tonight it isn't enough. Tonight he almost died and he aches in every part of himself and the only person in the world who could understand is Sherlock.

John pushes back the blankets and pulls on a shirt from the top of a basket of clean laundry that he never quite got around to folding and putting away in his drawers. He pushes his door open with a soft creak and starts down the stairs. They groan beneath his feet just a little quieter than usual, as if the house itself is another audience member to Sherlock's violin.

Sherlock's sitting in his chair in front of the fireplace with one leg folded beneath him.

If there was a fire lit, he would cast quite the tragically romantic figure arranged as he is. But Mrs. Hudson put an iron-clad moratorium on anything flammable in their flat after a few of Sherlock's more combustible experiments went terribly wrong.

Even so, the light through the windows falls on his face in patches of silver skin and shadow and his fingers arch over the strings like a spider's legs. "I thought you were sleeping," Sherlock says, not looking away from the blackened log that's sat in the grate for weeks.

John crosses the room and sits in his chair facing Sherlock. "Insomnia."

Sherlock makes the faintest amused noise of acknowledgement and carries on playing, eyes closing to half-mast.

With genuine truth John can claim to know a bit about very many things, but classical music isn't one them. He doesn't know if the piece Sherlock's playing is Bach or Beethoven or Mozart or any of the other genius composers whose names he knows, but could never just call up on command. When he was young, his mum played a bit of piano and tried to teach her little boy, but it never took.

It's lovely nonetheless, even though that's not the kind of compliment he can easily pass on to Sherlock. John rests his hands on his knees and rubs his thumb against an old, old scar. It predates Sherlock and his time in Afghanistan and medical school and all of it. In fact, it's nearly invisible unless John really looks for the sliver of silver skin that he can feel beneath the pad of his thumb.

When Sherlock finishes the piece, he pauses perfectly still for a moment. Then he inhales and straightens, looking intently at John.

"Do you believe that our friend Moriarty is just lying beneath a few pieces of rubble?" Sherlock asks. There are stains on his white shirt, smears of grit and dirt and ash. John can't remember where his jacket got to.

He shakes his head. "No, I don't."

"Because are you not entirely a fool," Sherlock says with a tight, awful, twisted little smile. "Unlike the rest of them. I lost this round," he says. "Quite soundly, though I would note that the odds were perhaps stacked slightly in his favor. Even so."

"We're alive," John counters. "That's something."

"Life is boring. We _lost_."

John is a healer, of course, because he is a doctor. But he is not usually the kind of obsessive fixer he sometimes saw in medical school. The hollow-eyed students rushing from place to place with the weight of life and death and meaning planted on their shoulders. They never understood that things will happen over which you have no control and sometimes the casualties will be people.

It is still difficult for him to accept that Sherlock is the way he is and there is nothing he can do to change that, without breaking the very thing that makes him so bloody fucking brilliant. And compelling.

"What was that song?"

Sherlock arches an eyebrow. "It was Bach."

John nods.

There is no logical explanation he can fathom for why he's sitting in 221b Baker Street at three in the morning with a man like Sherlock Holmes. It's impossible for him to explain why he isn't in Harry's spare room or out of London or married or any of the other thousand futures that once seemed possible. It's _illogical_ , is what it is.

But the question is and always has and always will be the option of change. Would he change it?

John looks at the skull on the mantle that Sherlock still talks to whenever John himself is indisposed. He looks at the clutter. He even glances through the kitchen to the fridge where there are no less than three human body parts being kept cold. "It's like living in a madhouse," he mutters.

Sherlock's laugh is short, but almost genuinely amused. "But it is _very_ interesting."

John looks at him and smiles softly. "You will catch him, you know."

Sherlock has the grace, or arrogance, to not pretend he doesn't know who John happens to be talking about. He holds out his bow and inspects it, likely imagining his favorite riding crop or a gun or something. Sherlock smiles to himself in another terrible way, the way in which he looks the least human. "I know." He looks to John. "Will you be joining me?"

For reasons he can't quite explain, even to himself, John reaches across the space that divides them and takes up Sherlock's hand. His violin rests against his shoulder and his gaze is nothing so much as curious. He has always, in some way, treated John like a particularly curious specimen that defies the usual understanding brought about from acute observation.

John kisses Sherlock's knuckles. He, too, smells like ash and chlorine, but tinged with the polish from his violin and the stubborn vestiges of cologne. "I will," John says quietly. "Always, Sherlock."

Then he leans back in his chair with his eyes closed, feeling the weight of Sherlock's restless gaze moving over his limbs and torso. There's undeniably a small thread of deep satisfaction that comes from knowing he can confound the great Sherlock Holmes, even in the very smallest ways.

"Very well," Sherlock says. John hears the faint thuds as he takes up his violin again.

"Will you play something else?" John asks. It feels like they are the only two people left in the whole of the dark world, except for the constant pressing sense of Moriarty that John always feels, and will feel until the man is really dead.

"What would you like?" Sherlock asks.

"You decide," John says, slitting his eyes open just enough to see Sherlock place his bow upon the string, close his eyes, and begin to play.


End file.
